It’ll come as no surprise that people from England represent the largest contingent of players in the Premier League. However, there’s a huge – and growing – number of foreign talent at the nation’s clubs too.
England coach Gareth Southgate claims that the number of homegrown starters in the English top flight has fallen from 38% to 28% in the last decade or so, meaning that the Premier League is increasingly a showcase of the multinational.
Jorginho
Oddly enough, Italians aren’t part of this. As of the 2023-24 campaign, there are just eight Italian players in the Premier League, only three of which ply their trade in the ‘big six’, i.e. Liverpool, Chelsea, Man United, Arsenal, Spurs, and the current 4/6 favorite for the title in the Premier League betting, Man City.
Jorginho plays for Arsenal, while Guglielmo Vicario and Destiny Udogie are both at Tottenham, a terminal runner-up that’s a decent 11/1 in the Premier League title odds after the first few games of the season.
The other Italians in the Premier League can be found a little further down the table. Emerson Palmieri plays for West Ham, alongside his compatriot Angelo Ogbonna. Then, there’s Luca Koleosho (Burnley), Sandro Tonali (Newcastle), and Nicolò Zaniolo (Aston Villa).
Combined, the octet has contributed nearly 4,000 minutes to the season so far, which works out at about 500 minutes each – or 52 minutes in each of the nine games played in the 2023/24 campaign.
Compared to countries like Brazil, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, all those numbers are small fry. Brazil has something of a second home in England, with 30 representatives. The three European nations have more than 20.
Andrea Silenzi
Italy’s eight players in the EPL is a record for the new decade. The country had between five and six players in England in the years between 2019/20 and 2023/24, and only got up to its current level back in 2018/19.
Italy had no players at all in England until the appearance of Andrea Silenzi in 1995/96. This move started a bit of a chain reaction as Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Gianluca Vialli, Benito Carbone, and Gianluca Festa joined the Roman the following year.
This Mediterranean “fever” peaked just before the millennium, when 17 Italians found a club in England, including Pierluigi Casiraghi and Marco Materazzi.
Rumours suggest that Jorginho could be on his way out of Arsenal in the January transfer window, as the London outfit attempts to fund the purchase of Fluminense’s Andre. This move would seemingly cement Italy’s fleeting presence in England.
The question that remains is, why don’t Italians seem to like playing in the Premier League?
Fabrizio Ravanelli
There’s always been a feeling that the early Premier League was built entirely around superstar playmakers like Middlesborough’s Fabrizio Ravanelli, something that simply wouldn’t happen in the modern game.
Having said that, the reality is that – just like England, until players like Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane began to roam, Italy likes to keep its players close. Whether that attitude has done the national team any good recently is up for debate.
